My Week Has Sucked!

This week has had it's ups and downs. The good things were I finally got Monster High 'Ghoulia' Dawn Of The Dance which I've been stalking Argos for. All my locals suddenly got tonnes more stock (fyi St Andrews have 2 Lagoona and Dundee Overgate have 1 Ghoulia and 1 (I think, I was so excited I didn't really look) Cleo, Dundee Wellgate also have 3, but I haven't checked which ones they are). *since writing this the Overgate have got another 2 DOTD in stock, so I don't know which ones they are*
I also eventually (we've been searching for weeks) found tights to match an outfit I'd bought for my friends daughter ages ago, for her birthday. The striped pair in the pack perfectly match the stripey pair on the H&M dress and are by Matthew Williamson at Debenhams. We're starting to be extremely thankful that my sister has three boys, because girls clothes are waaay too cute.
In Debenhams though, there were soooo many dresses I liked for myself. However even with their current promotion, they were mostly £40 down to £32, still too pricey for the huge amount I wanted to buy. Plus most of them weren't in stock in my size anyway. I just can't get them out of my head though, but can't afford to buy them now, so will have to! I know I have far too many dresses already and nowhere to put them, but I still stand in front of my wardrobe for 20 minutes every day doing that "I have nothing to wear" thing!

On eBay I've had a lot of hassle lately. Three buyers didn't pay me last time, so that involves a lot of chasing up and opening unpaid item cases and crap. Just a waste of my time. I've had an on-going dilemma with another buyer, where I sent her item to the address on the eBay invoice and then when I went so email her the tracking no. I realised her address had changed. She's refusing to take responsibility for it, I know I didn't and wouldn't make up an address (and give myself hassle) and eBay claim she has both addresses on file, so she's in the wrong. I posted the item a month ago and the tracking no. isn't giving me any info, it's not been delivered/signed for, but not sent back either. So where is it? The girl was initially going to report me (grrr, wth?), now she's backed off but I feel guilty I've kept her money and she possibly doesn't have the parcel (but then who does and who lives at that address now?). However if I fill in a missing parcel form, I'll need the invoice and it now magically shows her new address, not that one I sent to, so I'm buggered with that. It's just hassle I don't need and I've been emailing back and forth and checking that damn number every day!
Then did anyone else get involved in the Irregular Choice fraud scheme on eBay? I was desperate for the turquoise I'm Bossy shoes to match my bag and Schuh had sold out, but a girl (with over 400+ feedback I add) had my size, so I ordered them for £50 and free delivery. After a couple of weeks I thought it strange my parcel hadn't arrived and clicked on her page to find she had quite a few negative comments. I emailed her and she gave me a tracking number and said it had been sent the day before and to wait until the end of the week when she'd send out a replacement. I knew it was bull, but couldn't open a case with her until then anyway. The whole thing has majorly escalated since and every day she gets more negative feedback. EBay eventually found in my favour and refunded me (after a month of worry!), but this girl currently has over 100 negative feedback received in the last month, all for IC shoes of either £50, £55 or £60, that's well over £5000 she's stolen, unbelievable! And they're locking folk up for stealing doughnuts during the London riots? Seems ludicrous and yet she still appears to be a member on eBay, why have eBay not handed her over to the police? They shouldn't have to pay out for her and what a long winded process of working hard to earn over 400 feedback just to turn evil later on! Anyhow, Schuh amazingly got more stock at the weekend of the bunny shoes, so I didn't hesitate and bought them and it only cost me a couple more £'s than from eBay and they arrived a couple of days ago. Cute-ness!
In other IC news, I had fallen in love with the beautiful Bonnie Bonnet. We didn't seem to get the blue version in the UK and the green sold out pretty quickly, however they still had the black on the IC site. I'd been meaning to buy them when they went into the sale, but unfortunately the 38 sold out before I had funds. Then I get an email a couple of weeks later to say 'final few days of the sale' and I clicked just to check BB and what do you know, they have a 38 again! Fate right? So I order them, then get an email a couple of days later to say they don't have stock. Poo : (
The biggest disappointment came on Tuesday though, when I checked my emails. I'd ordered two pairs of Terry de Havilland shoes in the Secret Sales sale recently. Two friggin' pairs-I was delirious at doubling my collection. I'd stressed so much when the sale started because I had no money but desperately wanted the shoes. Had money been no object, I would probably have ordered one of everything, but the main styles I was interested in were these;

Emma in black suede and diamante, STUNNING
Lulu in green or silver (green would've been my 1st choice but my size was OOS)
Lola in fuchsia, signature wedge but a variation on the Margeaux
Lotte in black with pink rhinestones, not sure how often I'd wear these, but they look gorge
Ziggy in purple metallic, never seen this style before and quite fancied them
I kept popping these shoes in and out of my basket, trying to figure out my ultimate favourites and possibly narrow it down to only two. My sis very kindly lent me the money (hence my hesitation to go all out and order 4 or 5 pairs) and so I got Emma and Lulu. I was ecstatic. The only down side to ordering from SS is often, you have to wait weeks for delivery as they place the orders straight from the manufacturer after the sale has finished. I figured though, good things come to those who wait and the weeks have kinda flown by. So Tuesday, I get an email saying one pair are OOS and they've refunded me. Boom, GUTTED. It was the diamante pair too, which were ab fab in my mind. The other pair should arrive this week, but I'm still spewing. What annoys me is that I would've bought another pair if I'd known there was a possibility of one being OOS. I wish there was the option to select a replacement, it's the least they could do for the disappointment and for earning interest on my sisters money for a month! The prices were sooooo good too, HUGE disappointment : (

The other disappointment which was more a cloud with a silver lining... remember I was trying to lose weight earlier in the year? I lost 11 lbs, then Easter came and Mothers Day and Mums b'day, my sisters b'day then mine and they all involve chocolate and cakes and not losing weight! I've quite frankly eaten what I've liked since April and luckily have only put 1 lb back on. However Mum started back at a slimming class, so I said I'd do it with her. So for the past 2 weeks it's been frequent glasses of water, lots of fruit and veg, soup, healthy, healthy and no chocolate or other such treats. We've even taken to eating Weight Watchers biscuits, bread and crisps (not nearly as tasty as 'real' ones but never mind), given it was all for a good cause, I was in the zone. Hungry but in the zone! First week I lose nothing, nada, zilch! Annoying after all my hard work. I figured I might be 'dieting in arrears' as is often the case with me, so the 2nd week would reflect my 1st week. So Tuesday was weigh day and I lost...1 lb, one frigging pound, that was it. Mum lost 1.5lb the first week and stayed the same this week. Now I know many of you will be saying, but it's 1lb, at least it's something and it's more likely to stay off if you lose it slowly like that....I've heard it all before. The issue is, I've got so much to lose that 1lb isn't going to cut it and is in no way reflective of my new found healthy lifestyle! I could probably break a nail and lose 1lb! It was just so demotivating, to know that we hadn't cheated AT ALL, had done it by the book and lost nothing. So when I needed a sit-down, mid-shop on Tuesday, we popped into Debenhams and I had a bowl of chips and a massive square of chocolate cake. Honestly it was the yummiest, most delicious thing ever! Haha, it tasted sooo good and I didn't feel hungry all day! I know that's the last thing you should do when you've had a bad week, but I ate it guilt free and it was good, so there!

As usual I'm in two minds about what to do next. I'm determined to lose the weight, but I'm also very realistic and if I have to watch everything I eat and it's not showing results, it's not really worth it. I also think I maybe need to go off-course one day a week (within reason), I think my body needs 'real food' every so often! I had such high hopes of losing at least a stone before my nephews christening in a couple of months as well, but that looks highly unlikely. I would've thought that me going out for my walk every day would've helped too, because I've really been sticking to it. I just get the feeling I've lost all I can without increasing the exercise/activity side of things and my illness doesn't allow for me to do any more than I've been doing lately.

I spent most of yesterday trying to get JLS tickets for my little sis. Do you know how brain-numbing it is to sit and type those pesky security words? BOring! I didn't have any success getting her in the middle and close to the front, so had to give up and get to do it all again tomorrow when the real sale starts, yipee, not! Then yesterday my New Look dresses came. I've been lusting after the cute doggy print on this one for ages, how cute is that? I also managed to get the last of the Limited Edition green dress which hangs beautifully and feels like silk (although it's not). However my mother laughed at me in the dog one last night and said I looked ridiculous. It fits perfectly, isn't at all tight, however it makes me look very booby. It's all you look at and mum says it's doing nothing for me...she's right, but I had just liked it so much, I wanted it to work : ( The green is lovely, although a little clingy around my tummy, but I have to send it back too, because I got them on a promotion and don't want to pay full-price for the green on it's own. It's just pissing me off, because I'll never get rid of the boobage and it's blooming ruining my fashion choices more and more!
Add to that, that I've found a blog copying all my The Shoe Girl Diaries posts and I mean everything, the exact way I've written it and all the images, links and tags. Bar-stewards eh? In order for them to be removed it involves me having to fill in a form for google with EACH copied link and my original link. After getting one post removed yesterday, I suggested to google, that although I was grateful it would literally take hours for me to fill in the form for each and every link. The reply was, that was what I had to do! It really bothers me when people can't be a little more understanding. So now I have to waste my time doing this, it's taken 90 minutes to do around 2-3 months of links this morning and I'm losing the will to live. I shouldn't have to do this, the entire blog should be shut down as it's not just my content they've stolen. All the while they're sitting happy as Larry while they rack up the hits from me clicking on them! Bar-stewards again!!! Normally I wouldn't get so annoyed at this, but I don't like seeing my shoes, outfits and even worse, my face being passed off as someone elses work with no credit to me whatsoever and it's so monotonous following the complaint procedure.

Anyway, massive rant over. I'm sure I'll get over the majority of these, the Debenhams dresses I know I'll buckle and buy (hopefully they won't sell out in the meantime) and especially since I won't be shelling out a fortune on the Pearl Lowe stuff, the TDH shoes I'm going to remain gutted about forever and this blog nonsense is really irritating because it's such a waste of my time (when I could be blogging) and I wish Google would act less robot like and have a heart and realise that. I have a feeling they're going to ask me the direct links again to my blog, like they did last time, even although it's all printed on the form and that may just tip me over the edge because I refuse to double up on the info I'm already providing. So how has your week been? Good, bad, ugly? Let it all out here, you'll feel better I promise! And well done if you've managed to read all this...sure there are probably tonnes of spelling errors, eeep!